Senki

Manchevski disappointed me with this one. From a guy who has created Before the Rain I was waiting much more. He obviously has talent and it shows with the photography. The Ohrid lake shots are fantastic.

In terms of the plot, Shadows is blatantly plagiarizing Sixth Sense. It is annoyingly similar. The only difference is that there's no twist. We know it all almost from the beginning. Which actually makes it boring. Especially when we get the same shock-effect scene again and again and again.

Now the sex element. Why? We're getting gratuitous sex scenes for no particular reason. Not that I don't like the girls, especially Vesna Stanojevska, but someone should tell our friend Milcho that it has to blend with the plot!

And finally, being from Greece, I have to comment on the "Aegean Macedonians" issue. I couldn't fail to notice some sneaky propaganda attempts in secondary parts of the plot. I mean "exodus" and ...napalm bombs? In ...1913? This is honestly bordering the ridiculous. I could write a whole essay on where these ideas come from (may well be a part of a general nationalistic awakening in our neighbor state), however let me simply mention that the story of "Aegean Macedonians" (a very controversial term by itself) is far more complex than what people are led to believe from this film. I would be grateful if Manchevski left politics and history to people who actually know a thing or two.

I recently saw this at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival. This was Macedonia's official entry as Best Foreign Language Film to the Academy Awards. First of all, I had to refresh myself geographically to find out exactly where Macedonia is, which is a landlocked Balkan nation that was once part of the Yugoslav Republic and is surrounded by Serbia, Bugaria, Greece and Albania. Set in the nation's capital of Skopje with location shooting in Ohrid this is a beautiful country and a beautiful film. Director/writer Milcho Manchevski, noted for his first two critically acclaimed films and now residing in New York returns to Macedonia to film Shadows, a story about a young doctor, Lazar Perkov (Borce Nacev), who is involved in a life threatening car accident. After a year of rehabilitation and his marriage to Ignjat (Dime Llije) dissolving and living a professional life in the shadow of his successful and dominant mother, Dr. Vera Perkov (Sabina Ajrula), Lazar is visited by a mysterious old woman with a message for him in an old forgotten dialect that he can not decipher. He seeks translation to the message at a university where he meets Menka (Vesna Stanojevska) who is not who she seems. Menka, the old woman and a man with a baby are all from the old village where Lazar's mother was born and are seeking his help to right a wrong carelessly committed by his mother. Nacev and Ajrula are excellent in their roles but the big surprise of the cast is the acting debut of Stanojevska, an exotic beauty in an erotic role who in her day job away from acting is the Harpist with the Macedonian National Opera and Ballet Orchestra. What a great find by Manchevski as Stanojevska lights up the screen and is sure to have an international acting career if she so chooses. Veteran Italian cinematographer Fabio Chianchetti beautifully and masterly photographs. Kiril Spaseski as art director and David Munns as production designer give this film a great look blending the modern with the old. A great music score from Ryan Shore who was at the film's screening for Q&A. Some Tom Waitts music is also featured in the film. This is a fine film and one of my favorites of the 38 films I saw this year at the festival and I would give it a 9.0 out of 10.

Doctor Lazar Perkov has just returned to his apartment in Skopje from his parents' villa in the lakes district after a year convalescing from a near-fatal car crash.He tries to return to work at the hospital,but his nightmares won't help him.He forgets things,fears his recovery isn't stable and has now had his first visit from the disturbed souls of the dead(the old lady and the creepy looking guy with unbaptized infant).I saw "Senki" during Warsaw Film Festival and I was a little bit disappointed.The film is too long and quite dull in spots.It offers some beautiful photography of Macedonian landscapes,some scenes are pretty moving,but the horror elements are weak.Still there are four lovely sex scenes with a good dose of female nudity to keep me happy.6 out of 10.

I am very disappointed after watching Manchevski's film this evening. I came to the screening with his masterpiece "Before the Rain" in mind but some of the elements that struck me most about the film were endlessly recycled imageries of death/memory/temporal boundaries, exoticized depictions of landscape, identity and cultural otherness, tautological and often overstated motifs of death and desire, which literally drown the spectator into a sea of clichéd, old-fashioned psychological thriller formulas. Don't get me wrong, I like films which foreground their rich, highly-tuned semiotic texture and which interweave symbolic structures skilfully and compellingly. But here this twofold directorial temptation towards the symbolic and the literal doesn't quite pay off cinematically. The music is great, some of the montage is also powerful, the initial spatio-temporal build-up promising, but the film never quite takes off for me. The surreal, nightmarish, ghostly presences that populate the screen and Lazar's troubled mind amount, in my opinion, to some of the interesting cinematic effects of the film.

'Shadows' is a confection of images, evoked smells, fascinating faces, pitch-perfect acting, and unnerving events--with perhaps the best crash scene I have ever seen in film. My observation re: the accident might sound like hyperbole, but the psychology of the scene is sheer perfection. Its details are choice. I felt horrified, too, empathizing with all the people in the reaction shots, but at the same time exhilarated because it all looked so damn interesting! (The film has great cutaways!) I love it when a movie takes control of my moods and this has a driver's opening. There is also some great counterpoint with scenes and music. Really, very masterful. This film is better with a second viewing--like watching The Conformist--one always notices new and fascinating details in the frame, in the psyches of its characters.